Caring For Your Fuzzbutt

Ferret Owners - Farents

My Ferret History 2. Bear - the cheeky boy with a big heart!

Welcome to my ferret history 2.

Bear

Our Bear is quite the character. In the pet shop he was the biggest ferret of them all and when we looked at him he… wagged his tail! It was the funniest thing ever and I had to buy him for Doug as his early birthday present (this was in late January, Doug’s bday is in August!)

Bear’s big brown eyes pierced ours, and they were saying ‘you know you want me! Take me home!’ (Or at least that is what I thought), so we put a deposit down.We could not take him home straight away as our cage was not big enough for 2 ferrets and we were just in the middle of moving house.

And so, poor big Bear had to stay in the pet shop for a week but we visited him nearly every day and he always greeted us with a wag of his tail.

Bear is one of those incredible creatures which have been put on this earth to make humans laugh. When he plays with us we always burst out laughing at his crazy antics whether it is his break-dancing/war dance or him pouncing and tackling us. When he wants to be cute he will come in for a cuddle.

Not only is he great company, he actually caries a very important role of being our personal alarm clock. He takes this role very seriously as he will lick us till we wake up and start playing with him.

Whenever either of us are feeling lonely, sad or have had a bit of a tough day we always know our buddy Bear will be there to cheer us up. He is always in a great mood and he likes it when everyone else is too.

One other thing that he is really good at is being a scaredy-cat! If there is any loud noise then he gallops under our cupboard. Binxi always just watches him and looks like she is thinking ‘what a wimp!’

Not long ago Bear developed a horrible cough. At first we thought it was a cold but soon the cough got worse. It was not like it happened all the time but I just had a feeling that something was not right. We booked him into the specialist.

At first it seemed that nothing was wrong, the vet said that we could leave and monitor him or do a precautionary x-ray just in case. We chose the second. It turned out that we had reason to be suspicious.

He had a cyst on his lungs which was filled with puss… the first known case in a ferret. Now there was a dilemma. The vet suggested surgery which involved open chest surgery, but this often means decreased quality of life and no guarantee of it being successful. After already loosing 2 ferrets we were not ready to go through it again.

The vet got the puss out and now we are monitoring him. He is a trooper and seems to have healed himself. If anything does go wrong then we know what signs to look for. But I think he will be just fine.

Vet History:All of the above 2 first vaccinations Is de-sexed Was born about November 2007 ( is about the same age as Binxi).